Motorcycle Word of the Week: Pushrods

Remember those “Word of the Day” calendars? They were kind of fun in a nerdy way. Therefore, I figured I would try something similar here. Once a week, I am going to pick a technical term related to motorcycles and define it for the community. For some, these posts might seem ridiculous (“hey, I already know that”), but for others I hope they are educational. A lot of terminology gets thrown around in motorcycle circles, and there is no shame in admitting when you don’t know something. HappyWrench is here to help!

Pushrods: As the name implies, a pushrod, is a metal rod or tube that connects the valve lifters to the valves. More specifically, as the engine flywheels spin and the camshaft turns, the lifters (which sit on top of the lobes of the camshaft) move up and down transferring the circular motion of the flywheels to the rocker arms. When the pushrod is forced up, lifting the rocker arm, the valve (intake or exhaust) opens. The cam continues to turn, the pushrod lowers to its original position, and the valve closes. Below is a picture of my engine. In total, there are four pushrods (two intake and two exhaust). They are easy to see in this picture, because I have removed the rear-most one as I started to break down the engine.

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